The Death of Expertise

American Thinker ^ | 3/2/23 | J.B. Shurk

[cyclotic]

On the flip side, there’s a guy at the local tire shop who blows me away by his competence.

I drive a company car and I drive a lot, so oil changes are every few months. That shop is where I’m required to go.

When I come in, the counter guy knows me by name. That’s not real surprising because we share the same first name. What blows me away is that he knows my last name. That’s some level of expertise.

[Jim Noble]

“Everybody wants to be captain, until there’s captain stuff to do”

[cyclotic]

If I had the chance to do it again, I think I would have skipped college. I’ve never really used my degree although it’s a requirement for my job.

What’s interesting is, I’m a technical application trainer for my job. I work for a building materials supplier.

I’m respected for my ability to train and for public speaking, but I also build almost all of my demonstration materials myself, something almost none of my colleagues have the skill for. For the last week and the next few days, I’m at home making demo’s for a bunch of new products I have to do some training presentations on.

[Pearls Before Swine]

I used to tell my boys “you don’t know enough about that to have an opinion “ when warranted.

I think it woke-proofed them a bit, although that wasn’t as big a problem 20 years ago as it is now.

[rlmorel]

I need that shop of yours. I went to a well known tire outlet in my state for new tires, not an insubstantial purchase these days, and two tires on the driver side of the car had slow leaks.

I took the car back in, and they “fixed it” free, which is fine, but I took time off work to do it.

Then one of them kept leaking. So I took another day off work, and they “fixed” it.

Then I developed two tires with slow leaks again. I sucked it up, went to another place altogether, and paid them money to fix the leaks. (I decided I had to just pay the money, because my wife, who got really obsessive and fixated on the slow leaks and didn’t want to drive any distance on them, couldn’t stand listening to me gripe about it.)

Fine. I will pay with money to get them fixed!

THAT is the lack of competence I see, every day now.

[cyclotic]

Side issue, I took my wife’s car to another place in town this week.

I replaced the brakes and rotors in September. A few weeks later we noticed a minor pulse when braking. Since it had new rotors, I thought the problem might be something else so I took it in to get checked.

I had defective rotors which warped almost immediately. It’s something I can easily fix myself.

They didn’t charge me anything for doing the inspection. Guess who I’ll go to from now on for her car?

[hinckley buzzard]

Legendary Nobel laureate physicist Richard Feynman defined “science” as “the belief in the ignorance of experts.” IOW if it doesn’t sound right somehow, the scientific method gives you a way to go and check it out for yourself.